49ers’ Michael Crabtree has a prime time game

St. Louis — The 49ers‘ diva made a brief appearance in their regular-season finale Sunday. Eight yards from the end zone and apparently in the clear, Michael Crabtree started high-stepping, in perfect mimicry of the Hall of Fame cornerback who served as his mentor. But two paces into the impersonation, Crabtree reverted to a normal stride and calmly scored his 28-yard touchdown.

“A little bit of Deion in me,” he said. “I had to slow it down.”

Crabtree wouldn’t go deeper into his explanation, but it’s safe to assume that seeing an approaching Ram deterred him. It’s also safe to assume that a Prime Time act would not have played well with a head coach who handed out blue-collar work shirts at the beginning of the season.

Besides, Crabtree had a larger statement to make. The 49ers took just three wide receivers into the Rams game, and only one who had caught more than 10 passes in his NFL career. Of the team’s five original wideouts, Crabtree was the last one standing.

“He had a lot on his shoulders today,” Jim Harbaugh said after the 34-27 win, praising Crabtree before he mentioned any other player.

The team’s first pick from the 2009 draft caught nine passes for 92 yards and the first two-touchdown game of his career. He got a lot of attention from the Rams, who appeared to be administering an unusual amount of extra pokes, grabs and smacks in his direction.

“That’s just football, man,” Crabtree said.

He gave it back to them with stiff-arms and power sprints they couldn’t handle. He also put miles between himself and an unfortunate impression created by a long rookie-season holdout, a perfect record of no-shows in exhibition games and some odd-duck behavior during lockout-inspired practices organized by quarterback Alex Smith.

After channeling Deion Sanders on the first touchdown catch, Crabtree took a completely different approach for the second one. He made himself spectacularly unobtrusive.

When he lined up far, far to the left for a fake field-goal attempt, almost no one noticed. Not the Rams. Not the officials. Not the TV cameras. Not even many of his teammates.

“It was like I disappeared,” Crabtree said. “I was just over there, really just chillin’.”

After he caught the 14-yard pass from kicker David Akers and strolled into the end zone, he faced the crowd and held his hands out in an exaggerated “what are you gonna do?” shrug. Then he ran off the field, effusively pointing toward Akers.

The officials reviewed the touchdown to make sure the 49ers hadn’t pulled an illicit scam. Crabtree, who often lobbies the men in stripes, didn’t bother this time.

“I knew it was all good,” he said. “We practiced it too many times.”

Crabtree had sauntered toward the sideline after a failed third-down play, but never stepped over it. As long as he stayed inbounds the whole time between plays and didn’t line up alongside the 49ers’ bench area, his subterfuge was entirely legitimate. He didn’t have to report inside the yard-line numbers with the special-teams crew, because he had already done it before everyone else arrived.

Would everyone have lost track of Terrell Owens that way? Could Sanders have sold the farce? They were true divas, incapable of shedding attention.

Crabtree answered questions somewhat nervously after the game. His responses flowed most easily when he talked about working on the play with Akers, who told reporters that he worried about underthrowing the pass.

“In practice I told him, ‘Just throw the ball (up), man. I got you.’ ” Crabtree said. “So he did. It only came a little short, and so I had to run up under it and get the ball.”

Frank Gore, Alex Smith and Vernon Davis all said they didn’t know that the trick play was coming.

“I had no idea, no,” the quarterback said. “I thought (the field goal) got blocked or something. I heard the cheering. I didn’t know what happened. Then I saw Crabtree in the end zone. I figured it out then.”

For a long time, Crabtree remained invisible in the wrong ways. He didn’t have the kind of impact a high first-round pick should, and he and Smith seemed perpetually out of sync. But as the receiving corps dwindled late in the season, his production increased.

In Seattle, he made a great grab for a 41-yard completion along the sidelines to set up the winning field goal. The play came shortly after the Seahawks had taken the lead and knocked fellow receiver Kyle Williams out of the game.

One of his most revealing moments, though, came in the Arizona loss. On a late third-down catch, the Cardinals dropped him just short of the first down. Crabtree tried desperately to pull himself forward, driving himself along the turf on his elbows as if his life depended on crossing the first-down marker. The move was pointless, and it wasn’t pretty. It looked like blue-collar high-stepping.